Posts Tagged ‘Chilean miners’

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

– Bob Dylan, Things have changed

How many people a day are diagnosed with “mild-to-severe” depression? Don’t know, but some of us have always known we are on that list of what a friend of mine calls the walking dysfunctional. I’d call myself walking depressed, but I’m a lot more than walking – I’m laundry doing, dog walking, cat wrestling, curry making, child cheering, child rearing, child pick-up-and-drop-offing and drop-off and pick-upping (takes concentration and focus to remember this stuff- they call them schedules around here), grocery shopping, carpet vacuuming, porch sweeping, poo lifting, cock sucking… oh now come on, depressed people don’t do that, do they? Oh what, they don’t? oh well then. Well. Anyway. I’m writing Carnal Prose, remember, these things slip in.

I watched the 33 being reborn from the birth canal pierced through the skin and flesh of earth, she held them in her womb, dark and hot. Or was it a prison she had locked them into because they stole from her, again and again, tearing through her body and soul, wounding and killing her slowly by tearing off pieces they didn’t even need anymore… I guess I’m being fanciful. They were just men, poor miners, with women and children. They worked hard for a hard living, and I was thrilled and moved to see that metal cylinder emerge from the ground with an intact human being in it. I cried.

Will these miners, having been as low in the depths as a man can get, always be happy now? will they forever after appreciate life and love and time, having come so close to being buried alive, and left slowly to die? Will they choose not to ever go again into the physical depths, but also the metaphorical ones? or is it not a matter of choice at all? do we all just succumb to life and chemicals? Serotonin, dopamine, melatonin? (Something comes to mind about free will, but I’ll let it go.) And, when it isn’t possible to keep up the look of function anymore, do we then go looking for some solution – a pill, an herb, a practice, love in changing times? It’s true, and gets truer every day – I used to care, but things have changed.